Some things I haven’t had time to write about from the last few weeks:

• Synkron Syncs Files and Folders Across Platforms | Lifehacker
• GIMP Tricks Everyone Should Know | Lifehacker
• THIS is Why Solos Must Learn Technology and Think Globally | Build a Solo Practice, LLC
• Zotero: The Next-Generation Research Tool | Futurelawyer
• First Look: Microsoft Office Heads Online with Next Release | Lifehacker
• RSS and Sliced Bread. Tough To Explain. Never Go Back | Technology Evangelist
• Strategic Design: 6 Steps For Building Successful Websites | Smashing Magazine
• Value Billing Q&A | Legal Ease Blog
• YouMail Replaces, Transcribes Your Voicemail | Lifehacker

Kudos to LexisNexis for its efforts to reduce paper waste! At a moot court orientation session at the University of Minnesota Law School this morning, the LexisNexis rep showed up and—this blew me away—did not hand out a single sheet of paper.

The Westlaw rep, meanwhile, made a huge book available. Mercifully, they did not pass out copies to everyone this year. I took one the first year I taught moot court, and it went right into the recycling bin.

“Green” is becoming as lame a word as “extreme,” but I still like to see companies reducing waste. Especially the paper garbage they churn out. Score one for LexisNexis.

The legal system and Web 2.0 still seem largely unaware of one another, although that is starting to change as lawyers and consumers make inreasing use of sites like Avvo, Facebook, Wikipediaand mypractice to find lawyers, to network, and to get information about the law.

With that in mind, I created Minnlawpedia, a wiki where lawyers and non-lawyers can build a reference database for users of Minnesota courts. In particular, I want to create a place where legal consumers can get a “translation” of the impenetrable thicket of laws and procedures.

For example, what is an answer? Many people have no idea that an answer must be in writing, that it must be served on the opposing lawyer, and that one is due even if the lawsuit has not been filed with the court.

But as you can see, I need help building Minnlawpedia. It is far too large an undertaking for one person to handle.

Anyone can register, edit articles and create new articles. As an incentive to contribute, I will add a “featured link” to a website of your choice if you meaningfully contribute to 10% of the articles on Minnlawpedia. Right now, the site is very small, so a meaningful contribution to only one article will earn a featured link. Obviously, it will be harder to earn a featured link as the wiki grows.

Lexis has an atrocious mandatory binding arbitration clause in its contracts. Consumer Law & Policy Blog’s Paul Bland described Lexis’s arbitration clause this way:

Lexis’s arbitration clause includes a gag order on its customers requiring tem to keep all arbitrations confidential. A number of courts have struck down similar secrecy provisions in consumer arbitration clauses as unconscionable.

Lexis’s arbitration clause requires any customer with a claim against it to arbitrate the claim in the headquarters city of Lexis, which is apparently Dayton, Ohio. What a deal if the customer lives in Seattle or Maine! A number of courts have struck down similar provisions requiring consumers to travel long distances to arbitrate claims.

Yikes. Fortunately, as Mark Steinbach of O’Toole, Rothwell, Nassau & Steinbach found out, they are willing to drop the arbitration provision up front if a client puts their foot down. Good news!

For those of you who need a paid legal research service, consider using Lexis and asking them to drop the arbitration provision from the contract. Use your power as a consumer of legal services to show Lexis and Westlaw that they can benefit by making their agreements more fair.

All federal court transcripts will not be available to the public online through PACER (at $.08/page) within 90 days of delivery to the court clerk. That’s pretty darn affordable. That is pretty cheap compared to what I am used to paying for transcripts, so this is great news, both for lawyers and for the public.

Here’s the announcement.

[via MSBA Computer and Technology Law Section blog]

The Minnesota State Bar Associate today started offering free access to FastCase. FastCase got a mention here earlier this year. I gave it a test run yesterday for a brief I was writing, and really enjoyed using it. It is more simple than using Westlaw or Lexis, but returns good results in a fast and very easy-to-use interface.

FastCase doesn’t support the extensive terms and connectors that Westlaw does, but it does support basic boolean searching along with some advanced search terms and connectors. Very useful.

All in all, I’m thrilled with this new service from the MSBA. Even if this increases my dues a bit, I don’t mind. Compared to the increasingly exorbitant fees charged by Thompson-West and Lexis Nexis, FastCase is a bargain even at full price ($95/month).

Edit: For whatever reasons, the MSBA has not seen fit to post a link to its new services anywhere that anyone can find it. Use this link, if you want to access FastCase.

Hot on the heels of my mention of public.resource.org yesterday, another free caselaw repository was brought to my attention. AltLaw.org, which is in beta, purports to allow users to search the full text of decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and of the U.S. circuit courts.

The laws of any nation are, by definition, open source. The developers–courts and legislators–release their source code regularly so that users of the legal system can use it, test it, and report bugs.

None of this works, however, if users of the legal system do not have access to law and court decisions. Carl Malamud styles himself a virtual Robin Hood of the internet, and has started scanning cases from the 1880s stored on old West microfiche, and plans to keep going through contemporary cases because he believes the public should have access to the law. Revolutionary! He hopes to bring free access to court decisions to all. Why the courts are not doing this themselves is a mystery, but bravo to Malamud for forcing openness on the (relatively) closed system.

You can find Malamud’s fledgling archive at http://public.resource.org/.

(His letter to Thompson-West (PDF link) is very good, as well. It’s too bad there is no reply.)

[via StarTribune.com]

Law.com’s Legal Technology page has a useful article on how to find what you are looking for more accurately with Google.

IBM is working on a semantics-based search engine, FactSpotter, aimed at helping researchers, including lawyers searching through mounds of paper, find what they are looking for faster. What does “semantics-based” mean?

“Many words can be different things at the same time. The context makes the difference,” she said. “The tricky things here are not the words together but how are they linked.”

For example, common searches using keywords “Lincoln” and “vice president” likely won’t reveal President Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president. A semantic search should yield the answer: Hannibal Hamlin.

[via Legal Technology]